Zegna + more things

1 minutes estimated reading time

Ermenegildo Zegna now looks to China for fashion’s vanguard, not the US — QuartzyErmenegildo Zegna, grandson of the brand’s founder and current CEO of the group, explained at the WWD Apparel + Retail CEO Summit in New York yesterday (Oct. 30). “Now we test new things in China, and then if it works, we bring them around the world.” – the problem with this approach is threefold:

  • What about the Italian heritage and expertise that one buys Zegna for?
  • Chinese sizes are considerably different to westerners
  • Chinese consumers lack the kind of soft power of Koreans or Japanese and the innovations may not travel that well

More luxury content here.

IBM’s Old Playbook – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – interesting analysis about the Red Hat acquisition. Red Hat is as much a culture and business model injection as an acquisition for IBM. Of course it could all go wrong if IBM internal realpolitik kicks in and smothers the transformation.

Brandwatch presentations channel – slides from NYK London 2018 are well worth looking at from a marketing data and analytics perspective.

Facebook: the court of King Mark | Financial Times – Facebook shareholders should be alarmed about Mr Zuckerberg’s insularity, he adds. “Zuckerberg’s absolute control can increasingly be seen as Facebook’s Achilles heel.” – Is this even news? Zuckerberg’s control has been baked in since the IPO. His poor judgement is also exceptionally well documented. Sony believes it is a manufacturer— and innovator and creator of consumer electronics. It still employs fantastically talented engineers, but that doesn’t seem to be enough. Manufacturing allows copying so fast that there is not longer an easy way to get blue water between you and your competitors

US spies see new threats from global rivals, say it could be Cold War 2.0 – Stripes – because China

The SONY Brands: like watching an accident happen – breaks my heart to read this as a long time Sony customer. Sony and its sub-brands do lack power,

From Farm to Blockchain: Walmart Tracks Its Lettuce – The New York Times – overkill